This application generally relates to detecting temperature and protein denaturation during thermal therapy.
Recent development in thermal ablation techniques holds great promise for cancer treatment. High intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), for example, uses focused ultrasound to induce a localized temperature elevation, causing irreversible tissue necrosis in a target tumor. The amount of energy (i.e., thermal dose) is preferably controlled so that such procedures can be both safe and effective. One approach to determining thermal dose uses magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques to measure changes in tissue temperature, which provides an indirect estimate on the degree of tissue necrosis. However, during these MRI-guided thermal procedures, errors may be introduced into temperature measurements by many factors, such as movements of the object being imaged and dynamic changes in magnetic field intensity. Therefore, MRI-based temperature measurements alone may not provide sufficient guidance for administering thermal procedures.